


Burnt Bread

by theramblinrose



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Can be read alone, Caryl, F/M, broken mirrors universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26804530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theramblinrose/pseuds/theramblinrose
Summary: Caryl, AU, One shot.  Based on the Broken Mirrors universe, but can be read alone.  Burnt bread and muddy floors just weren’t the kinds of things that mattered in life.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Carol Peletier
Kudos: 15





	Burnt Bread

AN: This was a request for the Broken Mirrors universe. 

I’m deleting a collection and some of the pieces of that collection, so I’m posting the one shots I’m keeping independently. 

I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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While Carol got dinner started, Eli sat in the living room floor and played with his trucks. Diligently he moved load after load of Legos from one side of the room to the other with the dump truck after he carefully loaded them up, a block or two at a time, with the toy backhoe that Sophia had bought him. The transfer of blocks from just in front of the stairs to just in front of the television was serious work. It had to be done with focus and determination—and three-year-old Eli had more of that than most children his age seemed to have.

In between her tasks in the kitchen, Carol walked to the living room to glance at the boy, check on his progress, and make sure everything was fine. Every time she checked on Eli, she checked the clock and counted down the time before she could reasonably expect Daryl to get home.

Either her clock was broken, or Carol was a little too anxious to see her husband, because it seemed like it had barely moved since she’d come in the door.

It had all happened very differently this time than it had with Eli.

Carol had been suffering from a common, run of the mill cold, that had left her unable to breathe normally for what had felt like months. She’d done everything she could for it at home, including buying a dehumidifier that Daryl said was almost as loud as her lumberjack snoring, but it hadn’t seemed to pass. She was drained. Everything she had to do seemed to take everything she had to offer. She was dragging before her day even started. She’d only finally broken when the cold-turned-possible-flu had taken an even more dramatic turn for the worse and sent her to her knees in the bathroom, retching over even something as simple as toast for breakfast.

That morning, Carol had called and gotten a doctor’s appointment. She called in to work to say that she’d be late, and then she’d dropped Eli off at preschool on her way to the doctor. She’d gladly given them samples of each and every one of her bodily fluids that they’d requested and she’d recounted her symptoms for two nurses.

Despite her dislike of stripping down for the doctor, she’d sat on the table in her paper gown and anticipated his arrival to the small room. She hoped that he might have some kind of magical shot or pill to offer her—something fast-acting and miracle-working—that would take the flu away and leave her feeling like herself again. And she’d actually been a little disappointed when he’d walked in empty-handed to start his examination of her. 

She’d asked him what he was going to give her and, when he said he didn’t have anything to give her, she’d immediately asked him if she’d managed to come up with some kind of super-flu that had stumped him beyond his medical knowledge. She had expected him to laugh, as he did, because she’d meant it as a joke, but she hadn’t expected him to tell her that what she had was something he saw almost every day—and it would take care of itself in probably six to seven months. A more specific timeline, he assured her, would be provided by her OBGYN. 

They hadn’t even been trying. They hadn’t actively been trying to avoid it, but they hadn’t actively been trying either.

Carol hadn’t been able to focus all day. 

She still couldn’t focus. That was made clear when, caught daydreaming while she watched Eli making the trek back and forth across the living room floor, she was rudely made aware of her lack of focus by the shrill sound of the smoke detector going off. As soon as it started, Eli abandoned his work and started to cry, startled by the noise. Carol ran into the kitchen, yanked open the oven, and got out the pan that held the charcoaled garlic bread to stop it from producing anymore smoke while it started to smolder.

It wasn’t serious, but it could have been. 

Carol fanned at the smoke alarm with a towel, but she soon abandoned her efforts to go and rescue her son from the horror of the unknown. She scooped the little boy up and hugged him against her while she went back to fan the alarm.

“It’s OK, Eli,” Carol promised him. “It’s OK. Mama wasn’t paying attention. She burned some bread. That’s all. It’s OK.” 

“Loud!” He screamed at her, burying his face against her neck and dampening the skin there. 

“I know it’s loud,” Carol said. “Here—let’s go open the door, OK? We’ll open the door and the windows and the smoke will go out.”

“The smoke go outside?” Eli asked, his voice still shaking from his tears.

Carol laughed to herself.

“Yes,” she said. “The smoke will go outside and the alarm will be quiet. Can you tell it to be quiet?”

“Be quiet!” Eli commanded, not that the alarm was listening. 

“Tell it—Mama knows she burned the bread,” Carol said, stopping to open one of the windows as best she could with one hand.

“Mama know she...mama know she burn bread!” Eli commanded. 

With the job of telling the smoke detector all that it needed to know about the situation, Eli was forgetting that the sound was scary and loud and altogether unpleasant. Forgetting that the sound was harsh on his ears made him forget to cry, and that at least relieved a little stress of the moment for Carol. 

And everything that was going on, it seemed, helped Carol to forget that she was supposed to be nervously keeping track of each second that ticked by on the clock. 

When Carol opened the front door and stepped out on the porch with Eli, sucking in the clean and cool air as best she could through her stopped up nose, Daryl was already coming up the porch steps. 

“That the smoke alarm?” He asked as he came toward Carol. 

“I hope you don’t mind spaghetti without garlic bread,” Carol said. 

“Mama burn bread!” Eli announced proudly, as though it had been a shining moment in Carol’s domestic life.

“Sounds like she sure did,” Daryl said. He grabbed Eli from Carol the moment that the little boy held his arms out in his direction, and disappeared into the house with him. A moment later, the howling from inside stopped and Daryl reappeared in the doorway.

“How’d you turn it off so quickly?” Carol asked. “I tried fanning it.” 

“Took the battery out,” Daryl said. “Just let’s not burn the whole place down in a half hour or so and I’ll put it back in. Oven’s off and that bread is D-O-A.” 

Carol laughed to herself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am. I know you like bread with spaghetti.” 

Daryl shrugged.

“It’s bread,” he said. “Light bread’ll eat just as good, and we got a whole loaf of that. Where’s the spaghetti, though? Didn’t see it at the scene of the accident.” 

“In the refrigerator,” Carol said, laughing to herself. “I made it last night. After you went to bed. We can just heat it up.” 

Daryl nodded. 

“I got time to shower?” He asked.

“You’ve got time to do whatever you want,” Carol said. “Eli and I’ll warm up the spaghetti and it’ll be ready and waiting when you are.” 

“Tracked mud on the floor,” Daryl said. “Just so you know.”

Carol laughed again. He was usually good about removing his shoes at the door, but the alarm had stirred them both up. 

“It needed to be mopped anyway,” Carol said. “Go. Take a shower.”

Daryl’s only response to her command was to pass her the little boy back. Standing by the door, he toed off the offending boots and put them on the towel that was put there for them to rest on every evening. Then he disappeared back into the house and went directly toward the bathroom, stripping off his clothes as he went.

In the kitchen, Carol threw away the bread that was burned too black to save. She buckled Eli in his booster seat to keep him from being underfoot and she offered him his coloring book and crayons to entertain him while she alternated heating bowls of spaghetti in the microwave and cleaning up the dirty patches tracked on the floor. 

She was just taking the last bowl out of the microwave—the warmest and largest that she’d offer to Daryl—when she felt the pressure of Daryl’s palm pressed flat against her back to announce that he was there behind her. Carol put the hot bowl on the counter, closed the microwave door, and turned around to look at him. 

He was clean and shirtless, which was apparently how he intended to eat his dinner, though the tan lines that he had were almost dramatic enough to make it look like he was actually wearing a shirt. She smiled at him and he raised his eyebrows at her. 

“Need help?” He asked.

Carol shook her head. 

“This is the last bowl,” she said.

Her pulse picked up a notch and her stomach turned. She had no amazing way of telling Daryl the news that she’d gotten that morning. She’d spent half the day trying to think of something—some wonderful way to tell him that he’d remember forever—but she’d come up with nothing. 

“Why you lookin’ at me like that?” Daryl asked. “I do somethin’ wrong?” 

Carol laughed to herself and shook her head. 

“No,” she said. 

“You pissed about the mud?” He asked. Carol shook her head again. “Listen—I ain’t pissed about the bread. Just bread. I meant what I said. I don’t mind the light bread. I can make a spaghetti sandwich with it and it suits me just fine. You know Eli likes spaghetti sandwiches too. Hell—he’ll be tryin’ to get you to burn the bread every time.” 

“It’s not the bread, Daryl,” Carol said. 

“Alarm scared you?” Daryl asked.

“No,” Carol said. “Well—actually, yes. It did. But—it doesn’t have anything to do with the bread or the alarm. You know I’ve been sick...”

“Yeah I been waiting for it to hit me or Eli, big as you are on sharing your germs,” Daryl teased.

Carol felt an odd rush of relief at the teasing. She needed it at the moment. She hadn’t realized how nervous she’d be, or even how nervous she really had been all day, and she needed the lighthearted teasing that Daryl had to offer when he wanted to give her a hard time. 

She shook her head at him, finally feeling like she could sincerely smile at him a little.

“These aren’t germs that you’re going to catch,” Carol said.

“No?” Daryl asked, looking a little concerned himself.

Carol shook her head and was mindful to keep her own face as relaxed as possible. She didn’t want him to be worried. She didn’t want him to think the worst simply because he didn’t know what was going on. And both of them, they’d learned over the years, could have a bad habit of automatically jumping to the worst possible conclusions about things. 

They had to work, almost daily, to keep each other on even ground.

“No,” Carol said. “But—maybe I did kind of catch them from you.” His brow furrowed, but he didn’t look quite as concerned as he had. Carol’s smirk was making it difficult for him to worry too much. 

“What the hell you talkin’ about?” Daryl asked. “I ain’t sick. Healthy as a horse.” 

Carol bit her lip and nodded at him.

“Me too,” Carol said. “And—I’m not sure. I’ll find out tomorrow, but I think the baby might be too.” 

Daryl looked at her. He stared at her and Carol saw his throat bob as he swallowed a couple of times like he was trying to swallow down something that had gotten stuck in his mouth.

“You takin’ Eli to the doctor?” Daryl asked. Carol tried to bite back her smile just a little. She shook her head. “Then what the hell you talkin’ about?” Daryl asked.

“The doctor said my cold would take care of itself,” Carol said. “The flu or whatever—it would take care of itself. It’ll just—take a few months. The only catch is that, at the end of all that? Daryl—we’re going to need to fix that guest room up.”

Daryl swallowed again, in rapid succession. 

“Fix it up?” He asked. 

Carol smiled because she could see the look on his face. He knew what she was talking about, but he hadn’t let himself believe it. Not just yet. She nodded her head.

“Yeah,” she said. “Fix it up. For someone new. Or—probably for Eli to move there.” 

“You mean...?” Daryl asked. Carol nodded at him. “You mean you...?” He asked. 

“We,” Carol corrected. “Eli isn’t going to be the baby anymore.” 

Carol didn’t know what she expected Daryl’s reaction to be, but she hadn’t expected the reaction she got. She’d imagined that maybe he’d cheer. Maybe he’d make a toast to the baby or to her. Maybe he’d try to explain the whole thing to Eli. Instead, he reached and wrapped his arms around her. He pulled her into him and he ducked his head, resting it against the side of her neck in a warm hug. And, for a moment, he stood there simply holding the hug.

Carol closed her eyes and returned the embrace, not trying to stop herself from sighing at the feeling of calm that rushed over her as quickly and completely as the anxiety had come over her in waves before.

After a moment, Carol patted Daryl’s back with her hand.

“Your spaghetti is going to get cold,” she said. 

Daryl laughed to himself, but he did pull away from Carol. He turned quickly, showing her his back, and she saw him move his hand like he was wiping at his face.

“Gotta eat,” he said. “Gettin’ late and—he ain’t had no bath yet. Can’t go to bed too late. And—don’t want it bein’ too late when we call Soph. Gonna call her after dinner, ain’t we?”

“If you want to,” Carol said. “I didn’t know if we should maybe wait and tell her on Friday? When she comes over?” 

Daryl shook his head, his back still to Carol. 

“Call her,” he said. “She’ll wanna know right away. Be pissed if she don’t find out until Friday.” Daryl cleared his throat loudly. “I’ma go—wash my hands.” 

“OK,” Carol said, not pointing out that he’d just showered or that the kitchen sink was just as good for washing hands as the bathroom sink was. “Daryl,” she called as he disappeared into the hallway to go all the way to their bathroom for a simple handwashing. 

“What?” He called back.

“I’m happy,” Carol said. “Are you?” 

“Reckon you know,” he called back, leaving it at that. 

Carol smiled to herself and moved his bowl to the table before she sat down to cut up the spaghetti noodles for Eli so that he could eat them easily. Daryl didn’t need to say any more. He hadn’t even really needed to say anything. The hug—the warmth of which Carol could still feel around her body—had said enough.

She did know.

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AN: I hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think!


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